


Reception

by BeyondFandoms



Series: Unchained Memory [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Blood, Blood and Gore, Gore, I don't even know how to describe what happens to Daniel, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-21 09:55:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10682913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeyondFandoms/pseuds/BeyondFandoms
Summary: "This is the way the universe ends, not with a bang but a whimper."—It's only rated E for graphic violence and whatnot.





	Reception

**Author's Note:**

> ORIGINAL POST: [right here!](https://lessonsinsilence.tumblr.com/post/159808112882/reception)  
> —  
> [This song](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4KjIuOXvrus) and my friend [book-nerd1127](https://book-nerd1127.tumblr.com) are the reasons this is here. Thank them. Or cry at the moon. I don't police your actions; I'm not an American milk carton.

There was a time when Kevin was sure Daniel loved him. There was a time when Daniel _did_ love him. There was a time, at the same time as Daniel loving Kevin, when Kevin also loved Daniel. Kevin _still_ loved Daniel. The issue is that Daniel didn’t still love Kevin.

It wasn’t that Kevin had done anything wrong. No, none of it was Kevin’s fault — not _this_ time. This — like many other things, Kevin was coming to realise — was all because of StrexCorp.

StrexCorp had taken a lot from Kevin (and, by transference of meanings, Daniel). More often than not now, thoughts like these would come to the forefront of Kevin’s mind. Usually, the collar around his neck would wipe those away upon detection, as negativity obviously led to unsatisfactory performance in one’s job.

Tonight, however, thoughts of Daniel washed over Kevin like a flood of water from a bursting dam. And he let them come, if only for the way they’d start out.

In a time before StrexCorp’s takeover of Desert Bluffs, Kevin and Daniel had been partners. They’d been engaged, to state matters factually. They’d been together many years and loved each other _so much_ , the whole town seemed to know it was inevitable. Kevin reveled in the fond memories of this time, of date nights and affectionate kisses, of late-night cuddles and off-days spent in bed. Their world was a bubble of uncertainty, and that was just how they’d liked it.

When StrexCorp arrived, things began to change. Kevin was afraid, he wasn’t hiding that. Daniel was afraid as well, but he wasn’t showing it. He’d often reassure Kevin that everything would be all right. They’d win in the end; they had to. They’d nothing to fear, truly, and hadn’t his odd future-friend Cecil told him they’d win out anyway? Daniel was so convincing, Kevin could actually believe him for a while.

There wasn’t a specific moment that everything came crashing down around them. It was more a series of small explosions that, unbeknownst to them, were fashioned from the same bomb. Some explosions were loud and undeniable, like the blood and gore and the deaths racking up around the town. And some explosions were deaths in disguise, sweet moments tinged with the beginnings of a sorrow and loss so deep — _so impossibly deep_ — that it wasn’t yet fathomable. After all, when the universe ends, it is not with a **bang** , but a _whimper_.

_A whimper._

A whimper, a night, a Daniel and Kevin so inextricably intertwined upon their bed, not a scrap of clothing between them. Nothing was rushed, all was care and concern in the budding certainty that they wouldn’t have many more moments left like this. Kevin’s mind raced, a frenzied attempt to connect itself and the things it needed to remember, needed never to forget, his thoughts spilled out like their own private ceremony held between Kevin’s lips against Daniel’s skin:

_“I want to stretch time and make it so whatever we do tonight is an eternity, so that we never have to face what’s going to happen to us one of these mornings. I want to trace my fingers across every dark line of vein visible through your soft, pale skin. I want to trail my lips over every centimetre of you, until there is nothing of you that hasn’t felt my affection. I want to feel the flush of your skin heating up at every point of contact, chase every soft sigh you make with a kiss. I want to trace the lines of every scar upon you, to etch them into my memory. I want to hold you so tightly that I can feel your heart beating against mine, until I memorise the rhythm it keeps. I want to explore you as if we haven’t done this countless times before, traverse the landscape of your body until I know it so well I could map it. I want… I want to never lose you. But if it has to happen… I’d like to remember you in perfect clarity.”_

And when Kevin could remember himself — his _true_ self — he would remember that night and some nights, much like the night in which he now exists, he would take time and play that scene back over and over again. He’d play back every breath, every tentative tap of fingers against skin, every passionate, breathless kiss. He would play back himself and Daniel. He would play back everything they almost had.

And some nights, much like the night in which he currently exists, Kevin would be unable to stop what came next. The slow, excruciating process that, piece by piece, took his Daniel away from him.

He’d see the first time Daniel ever came home like that, his hands bloody and cool to the touch, not that Daniel could tell those anymore. And when Kevin asked what happened then, he knew things were ending and he would be powerless to stop them. Daniel would come home sporadically, less and less over time. When he did come home, it was with one part missing and something new in its place. Daniel didn’t come home the last time. All that had remained original to that moment had been his brain. Not that the whole thing was taken, no. Daniel was what StrexCorp called a _biomachine_ now. A regular Joe like you or me, same human flesh, same circuit fluids, same neurotransmitters, same data control unit. Nothing _too_ sinister, really. At least, that’s how StrexCorp would have it phrased.

The truth was that after Daniel’s mind was “upgraded” (as it was so fit to be termed), he lost his ability to care for Kevin. Not that he had no emotion at all, just that Kevin could no longer provoke any that were deemed “acceptable” by the standards of StrexCorp Synernists, Inc. Kevin would look into Daniel’s eyes, those eyes that had always looked back with such affection, and see only a calculated blankness, the casual demeanour of a businessman at his work. And for the first time since the two had met, Daniel had shown no reserve toward hurting Kevin.

Daniel had always been careful with him, knowing how Kevin bruised easily due to the oversensitivity of those strange tattoos that traversed his skin as they pleased, glowing their iridescent gold when Kevin found himself in a particularly exuberant mood. Before, Daniel would’ve treated Kevin almost like a china doll each day, at least until he found if Kevin was any more or less breakable than average. But this Daniel, this _terrible, twisted, creature created of unwilling flesh and impartial machine, this—this **impostor**_ of Kevin’s most beloved Daniel…

This Daniel didn’t care at all. He became instrumental in StrexCorp’s manoeuvres to control and weaponize Kevin. The slightest misstep on Kevin’s part and Daniel was all too happy to break a bone in reprimand. In the end, the _Smiling God_ couldn’t break Kevin nearly as much as having the love of his life so cruelly and mercilessly torture him.

Kevin did a lot of bad things after that. A considerable amount, he found, could be attributed to a fallacy he believed in almost as much as he now believed in the _Smiling God_ : If Kevin did to others what Daniel had done to him when _he_ was being unproductive or in any other way useless, then maybe that would fix whatever balance StrexCorp upset and Daniel would come back to him. Not Daniel the Biomachine, but _his_ Daniel.

After all, he _at least_ could make sure that when his universe ended yet again, it would end with a _**bang**_ , _not_ a whimper.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can submit [requests](https://lessonsinsilence.tumblr.com/requests) to my [request box](https://lessonsinsilence.tumblr.com/submit)!


End file.
